Dress Up - September

Nine months into the year and I'm still playing along with the uber talented Margaret's Dress Up Challenge whereby all the participants make a dress for every month of the year.

I wanted to make this September 2010 dress special as this is a special month for me as I've just had my 50th birthday - there, I've said it (again)!!

So, this dress is all about me, me, me!!!  LOL.  After this posting, I promise there will be no more said about me reaching my half a century, getting old(er) or anything else relating to age - I'm sick of it, so expect you are too!

Back to the dress ...

The base is white cardstock which I coloured with Antique Linen Distress Ink, then rubber stamped a floral background onto (which is now completely hidden).  The shape is loosely based on my wedding dress - it had huge puffed sleeves and was very voluminous (just the way I wanted it).

I searched through the family photo albums and found the only half decent photographs of yours truly suitable.  The main image is of my wedding day (back in 1992).  In the middle is when I was a bridesmaid, probably about 5 years of age.  In the right hand corner is me as a baby.  The other corner is a school photo and the little snippet poking out from behind the bridesmaid is me at my shy-est, probably about 3 years old. (I still feel like that most of the time, even now!)

I photocopied the photographs on plain copier paper and stuck them onto the dress (using glue stick).  I inked around the edges with Antique Linen Distress Ink to make the whole thing a little more cohesive.

Now the fun part, out with the beeswax and the little quilters iron.  I melted the wax over the pictures and smoothed it out with the iron.  I had so many attempts at this I was worried the cardstock was going to disintegrate - but it didn't!

Once dry, I did a little random rubber stamping and highlighted some of the wax by brushing on a ittle Perfect Pearls (two colours, Perfect Gold and Heirloom Gold). 

This gave a lovely aged, but slightly sparkling effect (just like me, aged but slightly sparkling - LOL!)

I'm pleased with how this one has turned out - I think it is special, so it's hanging on the inside of the wardrobe door for now on display.  I actually managed to get all of the other dresses in the wardrobe together.

 Nine dresses down, three to go, I think there will just about be enough room in there for them!

I'm off now to go and look at all the other dresses for this month - Margaret has a Mister Linky widget on her blog.

Thanks for looking x

Altered Jigsaw Piece

This puzzle piece is from a children's puzzle and measures just under 4" x 4".

The base was painted off white then rubber stamped with a 'Stamper Anonymous' stamp from the Tim Holtz collection called 'pattern pieces' which is one of my current favourites.  The smaller puzzle piece was stamped with a PaperArtsy mini stamp (MN20).

I then attached some vintage paper pattern pieces over the top with melted beeswax and coloured the edges with some dark brown and black melted wax crayons.

The holes to hold the embellishments and ribbon hanger were Crop-o-diled.

The torso / mannequin was moulded with air dried clay and covered with some more of the vintage paper pattern.

I think I may need to stock up on the beeswax now as I'd forgotton how enjoyable it is to work with - lol.

An Altered Key

This month's challenge over on Flickr's GAS MAMMA (group for altered art swaps)is to alter a key with romance as a theme.

Not being the most imaginative of people I couldn't think of how to effectively alter a key - a key's a key right! In the end I decided to make a little piece of artwork - with the key as the focal point - and used a mini canvas measuring just 2 1/2" x 3".

I love the shape of the old key I used and it was very rusty to begin with so I just enhanced it a little with some metallic gold rub on and added two silver heart shaped gems at the top. I entwined some gold beading around it and through some lace too which is attached to the canvas by a heart shape brad. The canvas itself I painted with acrylic, coloured the edges with more of the gold metallic rub on - coated the whole thing with beeswax and adhered some music score with more of the wax (it's an extract from 'Get me to the church on time' from My Fair Lady) A bit of lace top and bottom and a couple of flowers to finish.

Seeing as I was at a loss as to what to do for this challenge, I'm really pleased with the end result.

Round Robin Journal

Today I finished the last page of Astrid's Round Robin - the page being for Yvonne. The idea was to wait until you saw the next player's own first page then make a page yourself for them. However, as Yvonne's page is yet to materialise and as I've done all the others I decided to do her page anyway (after first getting permission from Yvonne of course!)

Yvonne's theme was 'Memories' in muted colours of our choice. I found an old black and white photograph of me aged about 3 (I think) with my aunt Vicky (Mum's youngest sister) and my maternal Grandfather (Bert was his name and he liked a bet and a fag and had a cauliflower ear from his boxing days!) This picture was taken in the grounds of the flats my Nan and Grandad lived in (Bethnal Green, east end of London) and must be one of the few family photos that exists of that time - early 60s. I have a rather pained expression on my face (didn't like my photo taken even way back then - lol), I think it's due to it be a sunny day - it looks as though we're all squinting too! I love my aunt's beehive hairstyle and boldly patterned dress in this picture - so 1960s and very befitting of her big, beautiful and flamboyant personality! She lives in Spain now but we're lucky enough to go and see her and her husband every year and have a swim in their pool!

As soon as I get the remaining pages and my own first page of the journal back, I will bind all the pages together - I have already made the front and back covers for it - and then I'll post a picture of it.

Oops forgot to say what I did for this page! Another beeswax collage - a copy of the photo layered onto lightly inked card, then some layers of tissue and the text - some black paper lace around the edges and finally some buttons to finish it off - the white one representing my Grandad - for the white shirt he's wearing, the green one for my aunt as that's her favourite colour and the pink one for me as I'm a sweet little girl in the picture - say aaahhh!

Art Freebies Challenge

This week's challenge on June's Art Freebie blog was to use an image of some papyrus. I knew papyrus was a type of old paper but I looked it up and discovered that it is 'thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant and first manufactured in Ancient Egypt'.

With this in mind I decided the use the image as a background to the Egyptian Pharaoh 'Amenhotep' (yes, I looked that up too - lol!). So it's a beeswax collage - the first layer is dark gold coloured tissue, then the image (after cutting parts of it away), then the Pharaoh and his name (covered again with some of the tissue to cover up the white paper) - all adhered with the beeswax and finally some gold ink around the edge to give a slight border.

It's turned out a bit green due to my printer ink running low - I quite like the effect though and it blends with the dark gold tissue.

Mannequin ATCs

I've joined another of the hosted swaps over on the DoCrafts forum. This one is a 'Mannequins' swap and is being hosted by Helen whose DoCraft's name is Smellihelli!
She said we could interpret the swap however we liked and I hope my interpretation is acceptable because I used a rubber stamped image of a dressmaker's form on a couple of the ATCs which I suppose isn't strictly the same as a mannequin as the dictionary defines it as a 'woman who models clothes'. Near enough I suppose - well I hope so anyway!
I couldn't resist using my favourite medium again - beeswax - I just love it! So all of the backgrounds have either dressmaking tissue paper or plain tissue paper beeswaxed onto them. The 'mannequins' are rubber stamped images onto Grungeboard (the pretty pink one and the yellow dressmaking one), the red one is rubber stamped onto metal which I then embossed and coloured with alcohol inks and finally, the one with the red button on is rubber stamped onto shrink plastic (that's why it's so tiny!)
Some lovely Mannequin ATCs have been appearing in the galleries and blogs of other participants and some absolutely stunning ones can be found in Sian's. I do hope that I'm lucky enough to get one of hers back in the swap. Wonder if Helen is taking bribes this time around - lol!!

Hopscotch!

The next page I’ve done for Astrid’s Round Robin Challenge is for Astrid herself.

Her theme was ‘Children of a Bygone Age’ and she didn’t mind which colours were used so long as they were vintage.

I saw an illustration of two little girls in a library book on how to draw which I thought would make a great focal point for this page. Rather than draw them myself though I photocopied the images - I don’t think my drawings would have resembled anything like two girls! It looked to me as though they were playing together and the idea of hopscotch was formed. I know hopscotch is still played today - in fact I was having a game with my 7 year old niece the other week - although my hopping about on one foot is not what it used to be - lol! So although it is still played today, I regard the game of hopscotch to be of a bygone age much like skipping and playing with two tennis balls up a wall - anyone remember the rhyme “Matthew Mark, Luke and John, next door neighbour carry on ... next door neighbour’s got the flu, so I’ll leave it up to you….” My little niece hasn’t quite got the hang of this game yet - but I still enjoy it! (What must my neighbours think - lol)

Anyway back to journal page. I started off by dividing the page into two and lightly chalked in blue for the sky and grey for the pavement. I pencilled in the hopscotch squares - (the perspective is not brilliant, but I did say I couldn’t draw) then covered the whole thing with a single layer of tissue paper with bleached beeswax. The railings are an image transfer directly onto the wax - using a photocopied image and applying it with nail polish remover (with acetone). Although the transfer is a little sketchy in some places I like the overall effect and think it adds to the vintage feel of the page.

I coloured in the two little girls and adhered them to the page with more wax. (I should have coated them with some gel medium first as the railings have come through onto their faces unfortunately). I printed off the dictionary definition of hopscotch onto some tracing paper and applied that with more wax.

Finally, I coloured around the edges with some oil pastels to give it an old, vintage feel. I hope Astrid likes it.